Helena Eronen, the one that wrote about sleeve badges, resigns

Helena Eronen announced Monday on Uusi Suomi her resignation as Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari’s aide. Eronen suggested in a controversial blog entry in April that foreigners should start wearing sleeve badges to help police hunt criminals.

There is some unconfirmed speculation that one factor behind Eronen’s resignation was an affair with Hirvisaari, which the latter’s wife wasn’t too happy about.

Hirvisaari got suspended for five months by the PS parliamentary group for not sacking his aide.

Even if Eronen isn’t a member of the PS, she used to advertise on Uusi Suomi as belonging to Muutos 2011, a far-right anti-immigration party.

While the PS has not said a word about Eronen’s resignation, it’s clear that the party is releived because she was a liability.

While the choice of hiring aides by some PS MPs raises some questions, Ulla Pyysalo is another aide that is still working at parliament after her name appeared on a Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta (SKV) membership list. SKV is a neo-Nazi association.

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Medium-sized, long-tailed Muroidean rodent hastily disembarking from a large buoyant marine vessel that is taking on water beyond the point at which its weight exceeds the upthrust exerted by the water in which it is increasingly submerging.

I didn’t misunderstand her Yossie, I found her comment to be crass and generally insulting towards immigrants, not because I thought she was serious, but because she thinks it’s okay for a parliamentary aide to make holocaust jokes.

Also, you seem to forget that she was, by implication, defending a police policy of targeting foreigners for stop and search, even while such a policy of discrimination almost certainly would be breaking Finnish Constitutional laws.

Yes, that is not the issue if you disagree with that. The problem is that it made scandal because people kept stating she in fact truly wants immigrants to wear sleeve badges. Even now enrique uses that tactic to keep reinforcing the idea that she really wanted them to wear sleeve badges when its not true at all.

Well, it certainly was a suggestion, no getting away from that, whether in satire or not. And stating that she claimed it was satire is also a clear representation of the facts. The problem with using the word ‘satire’ is that it appears to make it acceptable.

Anyhow, I still don’t think you have answered the key question of why PS acted on the Eronen case but have not acted to expel or even condemn convicted racists within its ranks, for which there has been an equal backlash and condemnation within the press.

My guess is that PS don’t mind the racists, but they don’t like the obvious associations with Nazism that would be made against it. Maybe Eronen’s comment was too close to the bone in that context. It didn’t help that she was seen in Facebook wearing an infamous Nazi army regiment emblem on her cap. It didn’t help that she was the aide to a convicted racist.

In that sense, people are within their rights to question her political colours.